Select multiple resources in the OC and issue a request on all of them

You can now specify priorities on requests

The topology widget allows you to display and manage resources with their relationships graphically

The server group introduces automatic fail-over capabilities for its members in the end-to-end policy

The server group allows to dynamically start and stop spare members by modifying the availability target of the group

Try out the SA AppMan early product code in your test environment and test scenarios that are important to your business.

The System Automation Team is very interested in your feedback. Please download the shipment readiness survey that is also available on the download page, add your feedback and send it back to us. Share your test experience with us.

today I want to start the discussion about a new feature in the comming SA AppMan release - "Global Messages". So far - with the current Operations Console an operate got feedback about actions which he triggered in a small message box on the top of his OC window. These messages informed him for example that a request has been submitted for processing or a policy will now be activated.

We wanted to have this feature in the new Face as well - but we improved it silghtly. Introducing the "SA Global Messages". Now messages as result of an action of any operator will be queued and displayed on a message log window - which can be seen by any operator. So if "John" activates a policy "Bob" will notice it as well in his view of the "SA Global Message" queue and vice versa (don't worry - this can be turned of to the old behavior only to see messages to tasks which you have been kicked of).

In addition we add Important messages of global scope to this queue - such as "Log of domain <x> requires attention" etc. Or "domain <y> just changed its state to online/offline, etc.

Today I want to show you how to use the so called "prelimiary data filter" for automation domains and create an own dashboard tailored to your needs. In my example I want to create an "Cross-site overview" dashboard for my two most important "business applications" in this exampled called "A1" and "A2". Both consists of a portal solution and can run either on production or on recovery site. Both applications have Web- and an Application Tier which makes use of our new ServerGroup in order to be able to react on different load needs.

So, how do I sort the domains into a list showing them sorted by site? Thats easy - in Edit mode you can make use of the preliminary data filter:

In the "Edit" mode of your new dashboard you already selected the SA dataprovider for domains - and assigned it to a tabled view like you see on the left.

Now you want to limit the number of domains to those automating/controlling components of your business applications (A1 and A2) on production site. It is helpfull to have a naming scheme for your domains here.

Select the SA tree table widget and press on "Edit" as seen on the picture on the left.

Next the Edit dialog will open and show a chapter "preliminary data filter - as you can see on the screenshot below:

Thid preliminary data filter can be used for domain and resource data provider to limit the rows shown in the table to those entries, which match your filter. Let us create two filters for domains having a "PA1" or "PA2" (for domain hosting production components of A1 or A2). This filter can be defined as seen in the following picture:

As you can see you can define multiple filters which can be applied either as "Or" and thus make the selected content bigger - "any rule" or can also be applied as logical "AND" which lowers the shown content to more specific items.

As final result you see immediately which domains match your filter(s) and you can achieve in iterations the result you want.

You should give the SA table widget a good title - I choose "Domains on Production Site" - to understand what I am seeing. In opposite I created a similar domain table using same technique but other filters on the right of my dashboard "Domains on DR Site". The result looks like the following (I am not finished yet....)

What do you think about this prelimiary data filter? Is this a useful feature for your environment to create specialized dashboards? Tell us your opinion via comment - I am eager to hear how you would use this feature...

In the last demo call I have shown you the following overview page which gives an overview of all connected domains in a graphical view, and a global message view showing actions performed by users and other important events. In addition you could click on a domain which updates the analog gauges that show the number of online top-level resources of the domain and the number of top-level resources which are not OK:

We have further evolved this dashboard and the current version now looks like this:

The new version has the following changes:

Use volume bars instead of analog gauges to present the information about number of online resources and not OK resources. This gives more space for the list below

A list view of the top-level resources of the currently selected domain (initially the E2E domain). The list is sorted by compound state, so that you immediately see which resources are in a bad state. In addition you can filter by name or by state.

Right now you can even use the list view to trigger actions:

Now my questions:

What is your general opinion about the new dashboard compared to the first version that I showed in the call?

Do you like to see the top-level resources of the selected domain with their name, observed state, and compound state using the list widget as shown?

What do you think about triggering actions? Should it be possible to actually trigger actions like "Request online/offline" etc. from this overview dashboard or should this be changed to only view the resources and not allow actions here (you can always drill-down to the domain page showing all resource details and trigger actions from there). Think about the following issues: In the list you only see the top-level resources. You do not see children, you do not see relationships, etc.

In the last sprint we implemented two feature requests based on the new DASH based SA Operations Console. I'd be very happy to get feedback and comments on those two enhancements:

Allow to specify a request priority (Low, High, Force) with a Request Online/Offline or Restart request.
Although priorities are possible in the command shell, so far it was not possible to specify request priorities in the SA Operations Console.We have now added this functionality to our new DASH based GUI. The corresponding request dialog looks like this:

Allow to submit requests independently of the current state of a resource

It is now possible to submit a request independently of the current state of the selected resource. For example, you can issue an Offline Request even if the resource is currently offline (e.g. to ensure by automation that it will not be started):

These are the corresponding RFE documents:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rfe/execute?use_case=viewRfe&CR_ID=31376It's i. e. impossible to request an offline operator vote on an offline resource. Because of different priorities sometimes it might be necessary to force a task down to prevent it will be started by any other automation.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rfe/execute?use_case=viewRfe&CR_ID=31374The number of commands is limited at the operator console. Operator need to know shell commands to do their work. Furthermore there are no parameters for commands available in opcon. All parameters should be available, too for example in checkboxes or drop down boxes.

Hello members of the IBM Tivoli System Automation Open Program community,

SA AppMan and SA MP early product code are available now since two weeks. Have you already downloaded and tried the code in your test environment?

Some of you already posted comments about your problems, questions and experiences in this Blog. Thanks a lot for your valuable contributions. They will help us to improve SA AppMan and SA MP.

At the same time, we also need your feedback in a more formal way - i.e. the Shipment Readiness Recommendation. Please fill in the form and send it back to us by Wednesday next week (2014-02-19).

You can find the Shipment Readiness Recommendation in the Files section of this community (link to document) or on the early product code download page. The document contains all necessary instructions. Send the completed form back to me (sven.lange-last@de.ibm.com).